Last Chance to See Revisited
Douglas Adams Beautiful Book About Endangered Species Still Inspires
Twenty years ago, the late Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine began a whirlwind tour of the most endangered animals on the planet for BBC Radio. As a result of the tour they produced a book, Last Chance to See (Published by Harmony Books, Copyright Serious Productions LTD and Mark Carwardine, ISBN: 0-517-58215-5) to document the experience.
Witty and Wonderful
The literary voice of Douglas Adams is impossible to mistake and even a book on the fate of wildlife pushed to the edge of extinction benefits from his one of a kind style. On seeing a massive Komodo Dragon for the first time, Adams remarks: "One is over twelve feet long and stands about a yard high, which you can't help but feel is entirely the wrong size for a lizard to be." It is almost like following Arthur Dent on holiday.
Not Quite One or the Other
While Last Chance to See is undoubtedly a book about the science of bringing nearly lost creatures back from the brink, it is also a travel book, narrated as only Douglas Adams can. Anyone who has ever spent time in the less developed areas of the world will undoubtedly see moments that reflect the awkward and often bizarre twists that international travel can take once North America and Europe are in the rear view mirror. Anyone who hasn't had the experience will enjoy a hearty belly laugh and then immediately force their travel agent to exchange their exotic destination tickets for a weekend pass to Disneyland.
Exactly the Right Approach
Last Chance to See does the two things that any science book should aim to do, and it does them both well.
- Entertain. The only disappointing part of the book is that it eventually ends.
- Make the audience want to learn more. Adams connects the audience to the creatures he meets in such a way that anyone reading the book today is likely to make a bee-line for Google to find out how the animals are doing twenty years later. In fact, Stephen Fry is doing just that for the BBC to follow up on the book in 2009.
Mixed Results
Among the animals that Adams and Carwardine visit, the blind river dolphin, known as Baiji, is now considered extinct and despite the Northern White Rhinoceros's recovery in the early 1990's, it has been once again brought to the edge of oblivion by intensified poaching. Indeed, Adams and Carwardine may well have had one of the last chances to see those creatures.
Still, all the news isn't so grim. The Kakapo is on the rebound despite it's evolutionary handicaps. The Komodo Dragon population remains approximately what it was when Last Chance to See was written and the Echo Parakeet was downgraded from "Critically Endangered" to merely "Endangered" in 2007 when the population rose to about 100 specimens.
Sifting the Ashes
Adams finishes the book with a parable about a woman who offers to sell the sum total of human wisdom, collected in 12 volumes for the bargain price of one sack of gold. When the offer is refused, she promptly burns half the books at the feet of her prospective buyers. A year later, she offers six books for two sacks and is again refused and again she burns half the books. When she is rebuffed in the third year and burns two of the remaining three books, several people curiously poke through the ashes of the books, but nothing is left.
The last, precious volume is finally bought for the princely sum of sixteen bags of gold leaving the buyers wondering what it was they might have had if they had acted earlier, before the price got so high. More importantly, they will never know.
The late Douglas Adams was fortunate to get a chance to see and we are fortunate that he wrote it all down.
Kakapo - Felix
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